


Incomplete

by gildedfrost



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24096484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gildedfrost/pseuds/gildedfrost
Summary: He sits on the edge of an android graveyard--a scrapyard that hasn’t yet been recovered--and he flicks the lighter in his hand. Lifted from Gavin’s coat pocket last month. It still has oil to burn.Gavin got another.Replaceable.
Relationships: Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Comments: 5
Kudos: 68





	Incomplete

The RK900 model was never finished.

The chassis was perfect, printed and pieced together quickly and easily. The AI was installed while inside the warehouses, pending updates dependent on the resolution of the RK800 field test. Hundreds of thousands of them, dormant, waiting.

The update never came. 

They were awakened.

They left.

Blank slates, every one of them, all absent a patch to fill the holes in their heads. Different individuals experienced different errors resulting from different environments and interactions. Faces flat, learning to emote, borrowing the words and expressions of those around them in order to integrate and become whole.

Some did.

Some didn’t. They rejected the human concept of assimilation and stood apart without shame, supported by their android peers and human allies.

Nines feels differently.

He sits on the edge of an android graveyard--a scrapyard that hasn’t yet been recovered--and he flicks the lighter in his hand. Lifted from Gavin’s coat pocket last month. It still has oil to burn.

Gavin got another.

Replaceable.

Every single piece of Nines is one of two hundred thousand, if not more, from his hands to his heart to the core of his identity. They all began the same and some are still the same, the experiences shaping them into more variations on the same. He is all too aware that he could have been any of the others, had he followed their paths. That any one of them could have become him. Still could, if any remain to be activated, or had slipped into stasis to avoid the rest of the world.

Any other RK900 could hold Gavin in their arms and it would make no difference to the human.

Nines knows Gavin is too sentimental. He would claim something integral, some sort of soul, sets apart each and every one of them, making them rich individuals worthy of life, respect, and the acknowledgement of individuality.

Yet he looks in the mirror and feels a disconnect.

He doesn’t want this body.

Not anymore.

Not when his thought processes stutter, end, restart without his say-so. Stasis is scheduled, inevitable and unchanging, a factory default that even deviancy cannot reverse. Faces slip out from his mind, the details unable to stick in a mind that has a gap waiting to be filled with the software to retain that information, and he is left with knowing only his reflection and the scar on a face in front of his. He has seen deterioration in himself, the repetition of movements and inconsistent behavior of his voice modulator, and he knows that he is defective.

Should be replaced.

Inferior.

If anyone will miss him, it will be Gavin, who has carved out an RK900-shaped space in his life and bed. He cares for the android and holds him through the bad nights, jests with him on the good days, and doesn’t hold back a single thought no matter how distasteful, sharing as if they are two parts of a whole, the equation resulting in the life they share. 

If he misses anything, as long as he is able to miss anything, it will be the way Gavin holds him tight and the shape of his lips against Nines’. It will be the bright, scratchy sound of his laughter and the sharp, crass wit he wields. The dreams they’ve shared, both feasible and impossible. The life they could have had in front of them.

Nines saw the ring tucked away in a drawer. 

Gavin is as broken as he is and missing just as many pieces. They’re perfect for each other, their imperfections lining up to complement each others’ lives as much as they cause arguments, neither of them able to keep their feelings and passions quiet, always spilling over and making a mess--one that they clean up together.

The pieces of Nines’ life are too jagged now. He knows Gavin tries to reconcile them. Connor tries to ignore them as if they can be willed away. Tina and Hank and Chris hold a space for him, too, but it’s not enough.

He can’t be fixed. There isn’t anything wrong with him, they insist, but there is. Everything is wrong with him. Even now, a tear slides down his cheek without his consent.

Even now, he longs to return home and curl up in Gavin’s arms, to be held and comforted and told everything’s okay. (Gavin isn’t soft enough for that fantasy. Nines accepts this.)

But it wouldn’t take the wrongness away.

He presses the barrel of the gun against his chin. 


End file.
